yeah, it’s a bit confusing. the cultural trust is working with a grant to produce 5 one-of-a-kind bike rack sculptures. they received a number of proposals. A committee picked 2, and the other 3 are being left up to this voting process from the public.

Sooooo, the top 3 racks on this list will get produced and installed. One of each.

As for your other question: by point rack, do you mean the “three rivers rack?”

When the city started installing the 3rivers racks, they were much cheaper. at the time they were approx 2:1 in cost, (so yeah, there could have been more) but they really really wanted the 3 rivers racks. Over time, the cost rose on the 3rivers racks, to the point of about 4:1 (it’s a bit cheaper in bulk). that’s when the city basically stopped ordering them, and instead moved on to the much cheaper U racks, which i was happy they did.

When I’m on my super sexy, semi-vintage road bike, I like to carry a mini lock. Sadly, it does not fit around the U-racks. Any chance of having the U-racks made of slightly narrower tubing, just for me?

I stopped using a mini-U since it was such a pain in the ass. If I ever see evidence that thieves around here are actually doing these “jack attacks” maybe I’ll go back but full-sized U is so much easier and on a good rack I can get frame + wheel.

It’s an onguard mini. It wasn’t so much that I wouldn’t be able to lock up at all, but it took a bit more playing around to get the bike positioned where it needed to be and it was definitely harder or impossible to get both the wheel and frame. For a while I used the Sheldon method which worked pretty well.

So, one time I went out and forgot my lock and instead of running home I just decided to buy another lock, the wife needed one anyways. Within a couple weeks I switched to the bigger lock – it’s just a little easier and more forgiving when you’re forced to lock to weird crap like the trash can outside Gooski’s, or locking to a rack with another bike on it.

Honestly, if I didn’t see a picture in this contest, I wouldn’t even know that the covered rack(Joshua Caputo & Elise Walton), the tentacles(Vaughn Washburn), or the spiraly noodly (Colin Carrier) were a bike racks at all.

I’m also not sure if several of these artists even know how to properly lock a bike with a ulock, since the design mockups seem to show bikes in positions that could never be locked securely. None of the mock ups are even shown with bikes locked (except the pipes one, that shows 1 of 3 bikes locked with a ulock and is one of the easier to lock to designs)

The one that is made to look like bike wheels (David Calfo) shows bikes all in a position that you could really only have the front wheel locked to the rack. Though, you could probably lock 3 bikes up here securely if you didn’t follow the design mockup’s idea of where to position the bikes. Though, the rack could likely be damaged very easily due to the materials used.

The spiraly noodly (Colin Carrier) seems to accomodate 6 bikes, but I doubt you could securely lock that many to it, especially if it’s near the curb. It also appears that it would take up a huge amount of space on the sidewalk.

The bridge (Will Schlough), covered rack(Joshua Caputo & Elise Walton), and the pipes (Keny Marshall) seem like you could actually lock to them easily, but won’t hold more than 2 or 3 bikes, and that’s ok.

erok wrote:how mini is your mini u lock? i’ve been using an on guard mini for years and it seems to fit around 90% of the things i attempt.

I have a Sunlite mini lock (can’t find the Amazon link) that has ~2.5″ between the shackle ends, and it’s only ~3.5″ long. It fits nicely in my pocket, it was cheap, and it fits around 3 rivers racks and most street signs. It’s just not wide enough for use with the U-racks.

I only use it with my road bike, for brief stops, when cargo space (i.e. space in my pockets) is at a premium. I guess I could upgrade to a proper mini lock…